One
of the most common things for internet users to access are social
networking sites. Facebook is the largest social networking site
online right now followed by MySpace. Both social networks have had
their share of serious trouble caused by users of the networks. In
January 2009, a man in England was sentenced to 18
years in prison for killing his wife after she changed her
Facebook status to single after a bitter divorce.

MySpace has
had problems with sexual offenders frequenting the site as well
and kicked
90,000 sex offenders off its site in February of 2009. One
of the most disturbing cases involving sexual abuse that stemmed from
a social networking site happened on Facebook and involved
18-year-old Anthony Stancl. Stancl was charged in February of
2009 with five counts of child enticement, two counts of third-degree
sexual assault, possession of child pornography, repeated sexual
assault of the same child, and making a bomb threat.

The
charges stem from a devious scheme that Stancl -- a high school
student at New Berlin Eisenhower High School in New Berlin, WI --
operated where he posed on Facebook as a female named Kayla (or in
some case, Emily). Stancl lured male classmates from his school into
sending him nude photos. Stancl then used the photos to blackmail
some of the male students into performing sexual acts with him by
threatening to release the photos to other students at the school and
post them online.

When police raided Stancl's home, they
recovered 300 nude images of juvenile males from his computer.
According to police, the youngest victim of sex acts with Stancl was
15 and the youngest male in one of the photos was 13. The incidents
started in 2007 and the last was in November of 2008. Stancl was
caught when he was linked to a bomb threat during the
investigation of the incident.

Stancl was sentenced
this week and faced as much as 30 years in prison and 20
years of extended supervision. Judge J. Mac Davis sentenced Stancl to
15 years in prison and another 13 years of extended supervision.
Stancl will also have to register as a sex offender.

Stancl
agreed to the prison time as part of a plea agreement that stipulated
he plead no contest to the charges and he was convicted on December
22, 2009 on two felony counts of repeated sexual assault of the same
child, possession of child pornography, and third-degree sexual
assault. Judge Davis imposed the sentence after citing a 2004 case
when Stancl was a juvenile where he was found delinquent in the
sexual assault of a 3-year old he was babysitting. Davis said, "I
am afraid of what he can and might do."

Stancl apologized
to the students and families that he victimized in court as well as
his own family, including a brother and sister still attending the
same high school. Stancl said, "I put you through a terrible
situation."

Stancl's defense attorney was seeking five
years in prison and ten years of supervision. The defense claimed
that the attacks stemmed from Stancl's struggles with homosexuality
and being "outed" as gay by an older boy at school. Stancl
was taken to prison immediately after the sentence was imposed.

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